


Ruby

by ChaseFan217



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Aquamarine Book AU, F/M, Mermaid Ruby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 14:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8252320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaseFan217/pseuds/ChaseFan217
Summary: Two young girls are in love with the dilapidated Beach Club near their home. After a huge storm, they discover Ruby, a mermaid, in the pool of the club. Ruby then fallen tail-over-fin in love with the cute, young man who works the snack bar at the Beach Club and refuses to leave until she gets a date with him. To make matters worse, the club is going to be torn down next Sunday; the same day Alex is getting ready to move away from her life-long friend Claire. As if the girls didn't have enough problems already without a stubborn, lovesick mermaid.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is un-betad just like all my other ones. Any mistakes made are my own. Some things have been changed about this story but several still remain the same. Credit goes to Alice Hoffman who is the author of the original story/book Aquamarine, which this is SPN fandom take on. All credit, agin, goes to her, the people who published the book, and the people who helped her publish this book. Enjoy.

AT THE BEACH CLUB, every day was hotter and hotter until the asphalt in the parking lot began to bubble; snow cones and ice-cream sandwiches melted as soon as they were removed from the snack shop’s freezers, and the sand burned the feet of anyone who dared to walk along the beach at noon. The heat popped and crackled and wouldn’t let up. It didn’t matter if there was an evening storm with high winds and buckets of pouring rain; by morning the sky was once again blue and clear. People began to sit in the shade, and after a while most of them stayed home in their cool, air conditioned rooms. Even those families who had been coming to the Beach Club for years gave up their memberships and found other ways to while away the scorching days of August.

The Beach Club had been more rundown every season, but this year was clearly the worst… No wonder the owner was closing the club at the end of the month; weeds were sprouting in the tennis courts, beach umbrellas were filled with holes, seagulls had taken over the pool area, nesting on chaise lounges and sipping chlorinated water. The lifeguards had gone out on strike in July and had never returned. Even the cafeteria had closed down — the windows were boarded over, the door nailed shut — leaving only the snack shop, run by Sam, who would soon be going off to college at Stanford and was far too busy reading to fix a sandwich or fetch a glass of lemonade.

The only people who still came to the Beach Club every day were two girls, a fourteen and a fifteen year old, and they didn’t mind the heat one bit. Claire and Alex had lived next door to each other and been best friends all their lives. Unlike most people in town, they wanted this summer to go on forever, no matter how humid or hot. They both hoped that August would continue beyond the confines of its thirty one days, in a blaze of sunshine and heat. These girls had stopped looking at calendars. They didn’t wear watches. They shut their eyes when the first star appeared in the sky. The reason they wished everyday to be the same was that at the end of the month, Alex would be moving to California with her grandparents and Claire would be left behind.

“Don’t talk about it.” Claire said, whenever Alex brought up the subject. “Don’t even think about it.”

For although Claire thought nothing of leaping from the highest diving platform or swimming so far out to sea that she disappeared from sight, she was easily frightened by other things — a future she couldn’t control, for instance, or the notion that a lifelong friendship might be lost at the end of the week when the Beach Club closed down for good and Alex moved away.  
As for Alex, she was quiet and shy and as afraid of water as Claire was drawn to it. She had lost both her parents in an accident on the expressway and ever since, her vision of the world had darkened. She’d become skittish, forsaking those things which brought other girls joy. Swimming, for instance, made her so nervous she refused to dip her toes into shallow water, not even on a burning hot day.

Between the two friends, Alex had always been the problem solver. She was the sort of girl who could take an old dress, stitch a hem, add a sash, and wind up with an outfit that made it seem as though she’d just walked out of the finest store. Given a patch of bare ground and some flower seeds, she would soon have the prettiest garden on the block. But now, Alex was faced with a problem she couldn’t solve. She had begged and she’d pleaded, promising to never again ask for another favor if only they could stay, but her grandparents had already sold their house and rented an apartment in California , right on the beach. As if an oceanfront view mattered to Alex. As if she ever wanted to go to any beach but the one at the Beach Club where she and Claire had spent every summer of their lives. Both girls knew that things changed, sometimes for the worse. Alex had lost her parents and Claire’s mother and father had been divorced, and now her mother worked long hours and hadn’t any time to have fun. But the Beach Club had always stayed the same, a place to hold on to even in the darkest days of winter when snow piled up by their back doors.

All summer long, the girls had been dropped off at the Beach Club by Claire’s mom on her way to work, and picked up at six o’clock sharp by Alex’s grandfather, Bobby. Bobby was so happy to be moving to California that all the neighbors agreed he now looked at least ten years younger; much better than he had last winter when he’d broken his leg after slipping on a patch of slick ice. He’d needed to use a wheelchair until the following spring, and it was this accident which had convinced Alex’s grandmother, Ellen, it was time to relocate to a place where winter was no longer a concern for what she called “rickety old bones.”

"What’s new, Susie Q’s?” Bobby would always say when the two friends traipsed through the heat waves that rose up in the parking lot at the end of the day. Time was speeding forward regardless of their wishes. No matter how slowly they dragged their feet, every day was still twenty four hours closer to moving day.

Whenever they left the Beach Club, they’d see Sam’s motorbike parked in the shadows of the breezeway. But there wasn’t another vehicle in sight. Who would want to spend their precious summer days at a beach club that had become a disaster area? Beyond a wire fence, several bulldozers were already at work tearing down the playground where the swings had long ago rusted into place. Still, it hadn’t been that many summers since Claire and Alex had ridden those swings into the sky, up through the heat waves and the white clouds, convinced they had all the time in the world.  
Now, in the last days of the Beach Club, time seemed to be their enemy. Sometimes, when they looked into the mirror in the changing room of the cabana, where bathing suits and towels were stored, they didn’t even look like themselves anymore. Their legs were too long, their arms too gangly, their hair cut too short to be pulled into ponytails or braids.

Each day when Alex’s grandfather asked “What’s new, Susie Q’s?” the girls always responded, “Nothing” in voices so glum, anyone would think they had no hope whatsoever for what the future might bring. By next summer, the Beach Club would be a bird sanctuary, and although the girls were happy for the birds, they didn’t understand why this one piece of their lives couldn’t go on as before.

Once the bulldozers started in on the wooden cabanas, once they destroyed the pool and the patio and the snack bar, wasn’t it possible that Alex would no longer remember summers spent at the Beach Club with her parents? Would Claire still recall how her father took her swimming in the farthest waves when her mom and dad were still married? When the Beach Club was gone, maybe they would forget each other as well. They’d grow up and be just like all those other people who didn’t know what it meant to have your best friend living right next door, grownups who had no idea of what it was like to have someone understand you so well they could tell what you were thinking even before you spoke aloud.

The last days of August were identical, blistering mornings fading into white hot afternoons. At the start of the day, the girls sat by the pool, trailing their fingers in the water and shooing the seagulls away. At lunch time, they bothered Sam, who seemed much too handsome to be as nice as he was. He never minded when Claire and Alex sat at the counter for hours, drinking lemonade and watching him read. In past summers, there had been flocks of teenaged girls hanging around Sam, but all those girls’ families had joined town pools or rented summer houses, and only Claire and Alex remained to admire him. Late in the afternoon, when it was almost time to go, the girls walked along the beach. Sometimes Claire went in for a swim to cool off, but Alex stayed on the shore, adding to her collection of stones and shells.  
And so every day blended into the next, until one morning there was a storm with gusts of sixty miles an hour and extraordinarily high tides. The girls had to stay home that day, and they shivered at the nearness of September. They barely said a word all afternoon. That night, in houses right next door to each other, neither one could sleep. The wind was so strong, it knocked on the rooftops and rattled the stars up above. Both Claire and Alex had the feeling that something was about to happen, in spite of how much they wanted their lives to remain the same.

When they arrived at the beach club the next morning, they found that the storm had left its mark. The wooden paths were littered with purple snails. Starfish and scallops were trapped in the fountain at the center of the patio and the snack bar was missing its roof. The pool had been roped off and a NO SWIMMING sign had been hastily installed by the owner, who hardly even bothered to visit the club anymore. The water in the pool was as thick as soup. Seaweed clogged up the filter. Barnacles clung to the blue-and-white tiles and luminous moon jellyfish slowly drifted by. Claire, who had learned how to swim in this very pool when she was only a toddler, was outraged at what a mess it had become.

“What difference does it make?” Alex said. “After next Saturday, they’ll drain the pool and bulldoze it, too.”

Even though she had never dared swim in the pool, there were tears in Alex’s eyes as she gazed into the murky waters. For the first time in a long while, she had no idea of what to do next. Maybe that was why Claire ducked under the ropes to take a closer look. Claire had always been fearless and a little too curious for her own good, but she’d always had Alex there behind her, urging her on, concocting their plans. She stuck her toes in the water and wondered what would become of her once she was all by herself. A nobody, a nothing, with no one to talk to and no one to call in the middle of the night when she heard her mother crying, or when a stray dog knocked over a garbage can. Claire stood at the very edge of the pool. Before Alex could tell her it wasn’t a good idea, before she lost all of her courage, she dove in.

Claire was such a good diver, there wasn’t a sound when she entered the water, just a series of ripples circling out from the center of the pool. Alex quickly clambered over the ropes and ran to the spot where Claire had last been standing, making certain to hold onto the railing so she wouldn’t fall in herself. Alex had spent her whole life worrying that her friend would do something foolish and jump in headfirst where she didn’t belong, and now Claire had done exactly that. The strange, cloudy water made Alex more nervous about the pool than she usually was. She had never even learned the Dead Man’s Float, which, when you really thought about it, wasn’t the most comforting of names. You never could tell what might happen in the water. You’d have to have faith in yourself to dive in, and that was something Alex didn’t possess.  
Sixty seconds later, Claire came bursting back through the surface, sputtering and shaking with cold. She dragged herself up the rungs of the ladder, too chilled and breathless to speak. In the deep end of the pool, the moon jellyfish rode the current through strands of greenish-brown seaweed.

Best friends don’t need to be told when something extraordinary has happened, and this was the case with Claire and Alex. One look, and Alex knew that her friend’s swim had been anything but ordinary.

“What did you see?” Alex asked. “What’s down there?”  
Claire didn’t say, ‘You’ll never believe me,’ which is what she would have told anyone else. She knew Alex would believe her, no matter what, so she whispered the name of what she’d seen in the deep end of the pool where everything was hazy and dim. Alex held even more tightly to the railing, lest she fall in and be faced with the creature Claire had seen, because she absolutely, positively, without a doubt, believed.

On this day when Alex’s grandfather asked, “What’s new Susie Q’s?” the girls stared at each other, eyes shining.

“Nothing.” They said together; the way best friends often do. Of course, what they really meant was that they weren’t quite sure. What they meant was that for the first time in a very long while, they couldn’t wait for morning to come.

 

* * *

 

 

 

THE NEXT DAY, as soon as they got out of Claire’s mother’s car in the parking lot, Claire was the one who took charge. After all, she’d been the one to see the mermaid at the bottom of the pool, huddled in a murky corner, her long hair streaming. Alex wouldn’t have ventured into the water for any reason, not even to see such a wondrous being. As they went through the entranceway to the Beach Club, Claire handed her friend a jar she’d stored in her backpack. Alex held the jar up to the light and tried her best to figure out what the slippery-looking things were inside.

“Herring.” Claire told her when Alex couldn’t venture a guess. “It’s a kind of marinated fish. I found it in the back of the pantry. Mermaids must get hungry. All we need to do is hide behind the diving board, and when she comes to the surface to eat, we can study her.”

“Good plan.” Alex said. At any other time, Alex would have been the one to come up with the plans, but lately she’d been up half the night, thinking about how most her sweaters and boots would be pointless in California, and how the leaves wouldn’t change in the fall, and how it would be summer all year long.

Claire, herself, was somewhat surprised to find that she’d actually been the one with the ideas. “You really think it’s a good plan?” she asked uncertainly.

“Excellent.” Alex said, although she, too, was surprised at how quickly everything was changing already, even though it was still the same.

After they’d sprinkled the herring in the pool, the girls waited behind the diving board. Jellyfish floated on the surface of the water, and a few bubbles arose up from the deep, but there was no sign of the mermaid. Hours passed and the girls didn’t move. Time was so slow, and the air was so hot, they almost fell asleep.  
When they didn’t show up at the snack bar for lunch, Sam came looking for them.

“What happened to my only customers?” he asked. “I was worried. I thought the seagulls had carried you away.”

Sam sat on the edge of a lounge chair and gazed into the pool. He was so handsome that for a few minutes the girls forgot there was a mermaid nearby.

“What a disaster.” Sam said, looking around the beach club. “I should’ve taken a different job this summer, but I guess I got used to this place.” When he’d first come to the Beach Club, he’d been the assistant to the assistant cook at the snack bar, and at lunch time they’d all had to work like crazy just to fill the orders of hamburgers and sandwiches and fries. There were crowds of people and the air smelled like coconut-scented sunscreen. Not a single one of the chaise lounges would have been empty on a beautiful day such as this. But that was all in the past.

“…I don’t want it to end.” Sam admitted.

“We know.” The girls said at the very same time. “Neither do we.”

“Don’t forget to come by and have a lemonade. My treat.” Sam said as he started back to the snack bar. “After all, there are only a few more days left to the summer.”

Claire had always noticed that Sam often read two books at a time, and Alex had always noticed that he was so kindhearted, he fed day-old bread to the seagulls that followed him as though he were their favorite person on earth. Now they both could tell he was almost as sad as they were about the Beach Club closing.  
The girls had been watching Sam so intently, it was a while before they realized that a mermaid had surfaced at the shallow end of the pool. Her hair was rich and dark and her nails were a blazing red. Between each finger there was a thin webbing, of the sort you might find on a newborn seal or a duck.

“What are you two staring at?” The mermaid said, when she turned and saw the girls gaping.

Her voice was as cool and fresh as bubbles rising from the ocean. She was as beautiful as a pearl, with a faint red blush to her dark tan skin and eyes so brown they were as black the deepest part of the ocean. But her dark-watery beauty didn’t mean the mermaid knew her manners.

“Stop looking at me!” She demanded, as she splashed at the girls. “Go away!”

The mermaid’s name was Ruby and she was much ruder than most creatures you might find at sea. At nineteen , she was the youngest of seven sisters, and had always been spoiled. She’d been indulged and cared for and allowed to act up in ways no self-respecting mermaid ever would. Her disagreeable temperament certainly hadn’t improved after spending two nights in the pool; tossed there like a stone or a sea urchin at the height of the terrible storm. Chlorine had seeped into her sensitive skin and opaque red scales dropped from her long, graceful tail. She hadn’t eaten anything more than a mouthful of that horrible herring the girls had strewn into the pool.

“You heard me!” Ruby said to Claire and Alex, who were mesmerized by her gleaming tail and by the way the mermaid could dive so quickly, she disappeared in a luminous flash. When she surfaced through the seaweed she was not pleased to see they were still there. “Scram!” She said. “Stop bothering me.”

The mermaid glided into the deep end of the pool; the better to see Sam at the snack bar. She had been watching him ever since she found herself stranded in the pool. His was the first human face she saw. She gazed at him with a bewildered expression, the sure sign of a mermaid in love.

“They’re closing the Beach Club at the end of the week. The pool is going to be drained.” Claire called to Ruby. “You’re going to have to go back to where you came from by Saturday.”

The mermaid started to pay attention. “Where will the people go?”

“What people?!” Claire said. “Everyone’s already gone except for us.”

“Not exactly.” Alex nodded toward Sam. “Not everyone.”  
“He’s going on Saturday, too.” Claire said. “He’s leaving for college.”

As soon as Ruby heard this, she began to cry blue, freshwater tears. No mermaid wants to fall in love with a human, but it was already too late for poor Ruby to be sensible. A sensible mermaid never would have wandered away from her sisters during a storm the way Ruby had.

As for Claire and Alex, they couldn’t know that a mermaid in love is far more irrational than a jellyfish and more stubborn than a barnacle. “You’ll just have to go back to the ocean.” They advised her.

“I’m not going anywhere.”  
Ruby’s tan complexion flushed red as she pouted. “I won’t leave before I meet him.”

Up at the snack bar, Sam was whistling a tune as he cleaned up the counter. Ruby tilted her head to listen, hearkening to what she clearly believed was the most beautiful melody anyone had ever been privileged to hear, either on land or at sea.

“Oh~” She sighed as she watched Sam. Her elbows rested on the edge of the pool. Her obsidian eyes were dreamy. “If he only knew how I felt about him.”

“I really don’t think he’s your type.” Alex said as politely as she could.

Ruby looked stricken. She had never been denied anything she wanted. “Of course he is.” she said.

“Well, for one thing, he lives on land.” Claire reminded the mermaid.

“You are both so mean!” Ruby cried. “You’re meaner than my sisters, and probably just as jealous!”

Since she’d been swept up by the storm and set down at the Beach Club, Ruby had felt a taste of freedom. More important than the terrible food and the chlorinated pool was the idea that she could do whatever she pleased. She tossed her head and fixed the girls with her dark-brown eyes. “No one can tell me what to do anymore. Not my sisters and certainly not you. Anyway, it’s too late. I’ve already made up my mind. I’m staying right here for as long as I want to. And no one can tell me otherwise!”

At the end of the day, the girls ran to Alex’s grandfather’s car and when he said “What’s new, Susie Q’s?” they let out a gale of giggles, convinced that no one would believe that they’d stumbled upon a mermaid who refused to behave. When they got to Alex’s grandparents’ house, they raced past the half-packed boxes in the living room and looked through the crates of books in Alex’s room, hoping to find a solution for Ruby’s predicament. Although they discovered references to many unusual creatures of the deep- from dolphins that were said to rescue lost sailors to sea-serpents twice the size of a whale- they couldn’t unearth a single bit of advice on what to do with a mermaid who’d fallen in love.  
That night, the girls had dinner at Claire’s house. Through the kitchen window they could see the new people, the ones who’d bought Alex’s grandparents’ house. They were getting a final tour of the yard to ensure that once they moved in they would know how to best care for the garden. They’d be aware of which plants would bloom to be day lilies and which ones would forever remain weeds. A red haired girl of thirteen trailed after the new people. She looked uncertain and lonely and she stopped to smell the roses that Alex’s grandmother had planted beside the back door.

“Maybe she’ll be your new best friend..?” Alex said.

“I’m never even going to talk to her.” Claire assured Alex.

“Never?” Alex said hopefully.

“Not unless there’s a fire and I have to shout for her to get out of the house.”

That night Alex was thinking about what might happen if there ever really was a fire; how Claire would run over in her nightgown and pound her fists on the door to wake everyone and save them, and how the red haired girl would always be grateful, and how no one would even remember that Alex had ever lived in that same house. Alex was so wrapped up in trying to forecast the future, that she wasn’t her usual problem-solving self. Frankly, she wasn’t herself at all. She nearly jumped out of her chair when the phone rang. It was the friends’ special signal: one ring, then hang up, then call right back again. Alex went into the kitchen to answer the phone. She looked through the window and across the yard to where Claire was, in her own kitchen. All night, Alex had been wondering who she would be without Claire to take up her plans and turn them into actions. In case of a fire, would Alex be courageous enough to knock on the door of a burning house?

Claire waved across the yard. “I found an encyclopedia of mythical creatures.” Claire held a red book up to the window for Alex to see.

“She’s not mythological.” Alex reminded her friend.

“Well, whatever she is, this book says that no mermaid can remain on land. The longest survival on record was one week in a circus and on the seventh day that mermaid dried up from head to tail. Nothing was left but a pile of grey dust.”

“What can we do?” Alex said. “She won’t listen to us.”  
Unless Claire was mistaken, Alex was actually asking for advice. Now that the responsibility rested with her, there was really no choice but for Claire to come up with a plan, and that’s exactly what she did.

“All we need to do is get her what she wants.” Claire decided, “Then she’ll have to listen.”

 

* * *

 

 

SAM WAS PACKING HIS BOOKS when they found him. He had worked at the Beach Club for four summers, and although he still hadn’t figured out how to cook a hamburger without burning the meat, he’d read one hundred and twenty two books during his time at the beach. All the same, he wasn’t sure he’d read quite enough to go to college. The future seemed like a cloud that day; the black, stormy kind it was impossible to see through, the sort that could make a person believe that blue skies would never again return.  
But Sam’s worrying was interrupted when the girls ran to the snack counter to tell him they needed his help. They had a cousin visiting, they told him, from overseas, which wasn’t so far from the truth. To make certain their cousin wouldn’t be bored, the girls wanted Sam to have dinner with her the following night.

“How can you two have the same cousin?” Sam was confused. “I didn’t even think you were related.”

“It’s through marriage.” Claire said because she’d heard other people use that excuse to explain complicated family relationships.

“And divorce.” Alex added, because she’d heard that as well.

“Anyway, she’s a very distant cousin.” Claire said. “We just want her to have a good time while she’s here. All you have to do is show up in the cafeteria at six o’clock tomorrow night.”

After Sam had agreed to the dinner, Alex began to wonder how Claire kept coming up with all these ideas, one after another, as if they just popped into her head. Now, for instance, Claire raced to the pool, where she sat with her feet dangling in the shallow end. She took a can of tuna and an opener out from her backpack, having remembered that the mermaid would be hungry.

“Good thinking.” Alex said to her friend.

Alex sat beside Claire, but was careful not to hang her feet over the edge of the pool. She looked into the water, and gingerly dipped one toe in. It wasn’t quite as cold as she’d thought it might be. Just to be safe, she held on to the concrete.

When they told Ruby of her date with Sam, she let out a shriek of joy that chased the perching seagulls into the sky.

“You only have to promise one thing.” The girls reminded her, “After tomorrow, you’ll go.”

Ruby begged and cried until the pool was awash with blue tears which stained the moon jellyfish turquoise and indigo, but the girls would not change their minds.

“We’re doing this for your own good.” They said, “We want what’s best for you.”

Without saltwater, they told her, Ruby’s skin would soon dry up until her fresh face became grainy as sand, her beautiful dark hair would curl and crust like dry seaweed, her tail would turn limp and dull. Already, her time away from the ocean had caused her to fade, so that when she blushed or was angry she turned pale pink rather than red. The webbing between her fingers had fallen away, and her hands looked like those of any ordinary girl. Out in the waves, her six sisters were calling for her. They missed her, and worried, and at high tide they came dangerously close to shore in their search.

“...All right.” Ruby said finally, “I promise I’ll go.” Upon making this vow, the mermaid cried even harder.

“Cheer up.” Alex said. “You’ll always remember the night you had together.”

But now that Ruby was to get her heart’s desire, she was nervous. “What if he doesn’t like me?” she wondered.

Although at first Ruby had been happy enough to be free of her sisters, the truth was she’d been coddled and protected for so long that she couldn’t seem to figure anything out on her own. She had never even braided her long, brown hair, for there had always been her sisters’ twelve hands to turn the strands into plaits.

“I look dreadful.” The mermaid said. Indeed, her hair was stringy and her fingertips were puckered and pale. “I don’t even have anything to wear.”

“Alex can solve that problem.” Claire said.

“I can?” Alex really hadn’t a clue as to what she could do to help out. How could she think straight? Her whole life was packed up and sitting in her grandparents’ garage. When the moving van came to cart everything away, she wasn’t sure she’d even know who she was anymore.

“I’ll get one of my mother’s dresses,” Claire said, “and you can make it beautiful, the way you always do.”

Although Alex was pleased by the compliment, she was thoughtful as well. “One problem.” She whispered, “What do we do about the tail?”

“Oh, the tail!”

The girls studied Ruby solemnly, staring until she covered her face with her hands.

“I’m horrid!” The mermaid despaired. “I’d be better off falling in love with a dolphin or a shark. It’s no use. It’s hopeless. I might as well stay in this pool until they drain it and take me away.”  
At that, Ruby sunk to the depths of the murky water. All the girls could see of her were little bubbles rising and popping as they hit the air.

“She’s probably right.” Alex crouched down to peer into the deep end. She splashed her hands in the cold salty water, hoping to call Ruby to the surface, but there was no response. Not a flicker, not a fin, not a face. “It is hopeless. How could we ever hide her tail?”

“I’ve got it!” Claire said. She couldn’t have been more pleased with herself, not even if she’d managed a perfect swan dive. “We’ll say she’s had an accident. She can’t walk, just like your grandfather last winter.”

That afternoon they ran to Alex’s grandfather’s car in the parking lot, threw themselves inside, and begged to borrow Bobby’s wheelchair before he could begin to get out the words Susie Q’s.  
“Please!” The girls cried, “It’s for a friend, and you don’t need it anymore.”

When they got home, Alex’s grandfather unearthed the wheelchair from the bottom of a pile of odds and ends set out for the moving men. Claire’s mother found a red dress at the back of her closet that she had worn to a dance years ago, before Claire had even been born. Later that night, after the grownups had gone to sleep, Alex went to her room and opened the last box she had packed. This was where she kept all the treasures of summers past. There were angel wings and creamy oyster shells, tiny starfish and purple rocks. She stitched every one onto the red dress, so that the fabric shone in the moonlight, shining as though it had just been fished out of the sea. Alex had decided not to think about the fact that in twenty four hours she would have to set off for California. She wasn’t going to think about what it would be like when there was no one next door to make secret phone calls to late at night, and no one to wave at through the open kitchen windows.

“It’s perfect,” Claire declared over the phone when Alex held the dress up to the window for her to see. The red fabric moved in the breeze. “He’ll fall in love with her the minute he sees her.”

Both girls were so sure of this they wouldn’t have been the least surprised to discover that all night long Sam dreamed of high tides and deep black seas, and that at the bottom of the Beach Club’s pool, where the moon jellyfish glittered like stars, Ruby braided her long, ebony hair and tried her best to ignore her sisters’ song, which reached up from the ocean to call her home.

 

* * *

 

 

 

THEY DECIDED TO TELL Alex’s grandfather. For one thing, he wasn’t like most grown-ups- he actually listened to what they had to say- and for another, the girls needed to stay at the Beach Club until nine, in order to take Ruby home from her date with Sam. After they had recounted the story of the mermaid in love, Bobby didn’t say a word. He didn’t say he’d never heard such nonsense before. He didn’t say, ‘Idjits,’ which he sometimes shouted out when he didn’t believe some bit of stupid news he heard on the radio. The way he listened made Alex realize how fortunate she was to have him as her grandfather. He even drove them to the beach that morning, telling Claire’s mom he wanted to chauffeur the girls as a way to say goodbye, since the next day was Saturday, their last day at the club. Although this excuse was true enough, the other reason he drove wasn’t mentioned: The wheelchair fit neatly into the trunk of his car.

“I know you won’t believe this…” Bobby said when they got to the beach, “But you’re not the only ones who’ve ever seen a mermaid. I’ve spotted several myself down in California, although I admit I’ve never gotten to know one personally. When you think about it, you are two lucky young ladies.”

Bobby told them to have a good time and not to worry. He’d be waiting in the parking lot at nine and, like most people who’ve seen mermaids, even from a distance, he could be depended on not to tell.

Claire and Alex borrowed a hammer they found in one of the abandoned cabanas to open the boarded-up cafeteria. Once inside, they swept the layer of sand from the floor and dusted the cobwebs off tables and chairs. After that was accomplished, they set out the dinner Claire had thought to bring along, a carefully planned menu of tuna-fish sandwiches, seaweed salad, and sardines on toast. There was spring water for Sam and a glass of saltwater, perfectly chilled for Ruby. When they got to the pool, they saw that the water had turned so murky that the shallow end resembled a tidal pool. Purple snails climbed the metal rungs of the stairs and seagulls dived to scoop up the little silver fish that swam past the mosaic tiles. Ruby was waiting for them. She was even more faded than she’d been the day before, her tail withering to a light pink, her complexion turning chalky, but when she saw the dress they held up, she turned red with delight.

“Come and get me out.” The mermaid demanded, and then she thought better of what she had said. “Please,” she amended, “help me.”

“How do we get her out?” Alex asked Claire.

“We have to go into the pool and carry her.” Claire said. “There is no other way.”

Alex turned cold at the very thought. “But I don’t swim.” She reminded her friend.

“You don’t have to.” Claire assured her, “All you have to do is wade into the shallow end.”

And so they went into the pool slowly, and only as deep as their waists. But even in three feet of water, Alex was fearful, especially when the moon jellies floated near. Still, the girls managed to carry Ruby out, and they lifted her onto the wheelchair. After that, they helped her get dressed in one of the abandoned cabanas. When they cleaned off the mirror and Ruby finally saw her reflection, she made a sound that was somewhere between laughter and a wave breaking.

“Oh, thank you!” She said, completely delighted. “I look like a real girl.”

As they wheeled Ruby to the cafeteria, the sun began to set. Thankfully, the air was turning cooler- still being on land had begun to affect the mermaid. Out of saltwater, she was rapidly drying up. Alex had to collect the trail of scales that were shedding from her translucent-pink tail.

“What if he doesn’t like me?” Ruby worried. “What if I’m all wrong?”  
But she had nothing to worry about. Claire and Alex knew that for certain because the moment Sam saw her, he looked as though he were drowning.

“She’s your cousin?” He said to the girls, “I’ve never seen anyone like her before.”

“That’s because she isn’t like anyone else. She’s special.” Claire told Sam, “And she’s had an accident... sort of, so don’t ask her to dance.”

Claire and Alex waited outside on the patio. They pulled up lounge chairs and listened to the murmur of voices and the beautiful sound of Ruby’s watery laughter. Up in the summer sky, there were so many stars a person would never be able to count them all. Alex wondered if there would be the exact same stars in California, and if when she gazed out her window she’d still be looking at the same constellations that Claire saw.

“That new girl with the red hair isn’t so horrible.” Alex said, “Her name is Anna.” The new people had come back again, and Alex had showed Anna the room that would soon be hers. “She’s actually nice.”

“I don’t care.” Claire said. “It doesn’t really matter to me if she’s nice or not. I’m never talking to her.”

“Unless there’s a fire.” Alex reminded her friend.

“Or an earthquake.” Claire said grudgingly.

“You’d have to.” Alex said. “You’d have no choice.”

“But I’d never call her on the phone with our code.”

“No. Defiantly not.”  
Sometimes it was a comfort to say the thing you were most afraid

of aloud. Tonight, Alex felt certain that stars would shine as brightly, no matter where a person was when she watched them. Even if someone was at the bottom of the deepest sea, the light would find her.

When it was nearly nine o’clock, the girls went to retrieve Ruby. Silvery moonlight was spilling into the cafeteria. Sam looked a little stunned when the girls said he’d better say goodbye to their cousin. Time had a habit of moving too fast. Anyone could see that from the expression on Sam’s face.

“Already?” he said mournfully. All last night he had dreamed of the ocean, and now it seemed to him that he might be dreaming still.

“It’s not time.” Ruby insisted, “It can’t be over.”

But it was. Beneath the wheelchair a circle of fish scales the color of moonlight had collected. Each one was now evaporating into fine, grey dust.

“Can I have your phone number?” Sam asked the mermaid as the girls hurried to wheel her out the door. “Your address?”

“No,” Claire and Alex said at the same time, “She’s going away.”

“I’m going away, too.” Sam said, confused.

“Well, she’s going farther.” Alex told him.

“She’s going someplace you can’t ever get to.” Claire added.  
But Ruby knew better. She unhooked one of the shells from her beautiful red dress and gave it to Sam. She promised that if he said her name into the shell, she would hear him, no matter where she might be.

“I don’t think that’s possible.” Sam shook his head. He’d read so many books that he thought he knew how every story ended.

“Anything is possible.” Ruby told him, and when the girls looked at her face, they knew that this was true.

Ruby didn’t say a word when the girls brought her back to the pool. If she was crying, she didn’t let them see. Tomorrow at noon, high tide would race in. Ruby was sure of this because a mermaid can always tell the tide, just as easily as a person can distinguish night from day. It was then she’d have to leave. The girls stored the wheelchair in an abandoned cabana and promised they’d be back in the morning, first thing. Ruby had become so weak from her stay on land she hadn’t any strength left. She was too exhausted to swim and was forced to stay in the shallow end of the pool. All the same, she refused to take off the red dress, even though it weighed her down. By now, Ruby was as pale as those fish you find beached on the shore, and she’d begun to labor for breath.

“This is the most beautiful night there has ever been...” the mermaid whispered.  
The girls ran to the parking lot where Bobby was dozing behind the wheel of his car.

“So!” He asked when they got in the car, “Was your mermaid happy with tonight’s results?”

“She said it was the most beautiful night there had ever been.” Alex said.

When the girls looked around them, they saw that this was true. Claire and Alex peered back through the Beach Club gates, to the beach where the white crests of the waves broke on the shore. They could see the stars sparkling above. To have a night like this could make almost anyone believe in the future.

The furniture in Alex’s grandparents’ house was gone now, and because of this they were all supposed to sleep at Claire’s. But the girls begged and pleaded and at last the grownups gave in and allowed them to take their sleeping bags and camp out in the empty living room at Alex’s house. It felt funny to be there without the sofa and the table and the pillows and the books and everything else that had made this Alex’s home. Their voices echoed off the bare walls.

“Do you think she’ll really go tomorrow?” Claire asked.

“She has to.” Alex said, “She doesn’t have a choice.”

“Well, I wish she could stay.” Claire’s voice sounded strange, as though she were about to cry, but of course it was Alex who had always been the crier, not Claire. Or at least this had been true up until now.

“You know what?” Right then Alex felt certain that some things really did stay the same. “I think she wishes that, too.”

 

* * *

 

 

ON SATURDAY, the owner of the Beach Club returned, along with his wife, his children, his grandchildren, all his uncles and aunts, and everyone who had ever worked at the Beach Club. A good-bye party was being held, with live music and a barbecue and more people than the Beach Club had seen all summer long. The line at the snack bar crisscrossed the patio, with crowds calling for sandwiches and sodas. Streamers and balloons had been strung over the entranceway. Even the bulldozers had been decorated. But despite the crepe paper necklaces and the headdresses of streamers, the machines looked like yellow monsters. No one could disguise that their purpose was to dismantle the club.

“Where have all these people been all summer?!” Claire grumbled when she and Alex arrived. The girls made their way through the crowd. “The one day we want some privacy, this place is mobbed!”

They spied Sam, who had already packed up his books and was leaving for California later that day. He was working hard, trying to keep up with the demand of the crowd, but when he noticed the girls, he left everything and came over. He had the white shell Ruby had given him on a chain around his neck. He looked as though he hadn’t had a wink of sleep.

“How can I leave without saying goodbye to her?” he said to the girls.

“You’ll just have to.” Claire said.

“We all have to do what we don’t want to do sometimes.” Alex added.

The girls looked nervously at the pool. At least the warning ropes were still up and none of the crowd had yet ventured near.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Sam asked.

One little boy was approaching the deep end. He had a fishing net in his hands and a look on his face that spelled trouble.  
“Fishy~” the little boy said.

“If there’s something we’re not telling you, we’re not telling you for your own good.” Alex said. “And for Ruby’s good, too.”

The little boy was standing at the very edge of the pool, teetering on the cement.

“Oh, no!” Claire said.

“Get back here!” Alex cried.

But the little boy didn’t listen, and as they watched, he fell with barely a splash into the murky water. When Sam saw what had happened, he ran so fast the girls could hardly keep up. He dove into the pool with his clothes and his shoes on. The girls could hear the little boy’s parents calling to find their dear Thomas who was always such a wanderer. His parents had no idea that Thomas had already been saved, and was secure in Sam’s and Ruby’s arms. Someone else might have been shocked to see the iridescent pink and red tail which guided Ruby through the water, but if anything, Sam’s eyes shone even brighter when he looked at her. As for the mermaid, she had used her last bit of strength to catch the boy when he fell. She was now as pale as moonlight, and so weak Sam had to help her back to the shallow end of the pool. Thankfully, Thomas was so surprised to find that the fish he’d discovered was a girl that he didn’t say a word.

“We have to take her back now!” Claire said, “We can’t wait another minute!”

Sam and Ruby looked at each other. Neither one wanted the other to leave, but without the ocean Ruby would fade into dust. By now, everyone was searching for Thomas and the crowd was coming dangerously close.

“Go on!” Sam told the girls, “I’ll take care of things here.”

Ruby turned to him then. Her voice was light as sea mist. “Wherever you are,” she said, “I’ll find you.”

While the girls carried Ruby out of the pool to place her in the wheelchair she whispered something that sounded like ‘thank you.’ She had become so dehydrated from her time on land that she was now surprisingly light and all that was left of her voice was a trickle.

Sam went to the far end of the pool and waved his arms in the air. “Over here!” He called to the crowd. He had wrapped Thomas in a blanket and then he lifted the boy up for all to see. Everyone turned to look, and in that moment the girls slipped away with Ruby.

The crowd surged around the rescued Thomas. People cheered and called Sam a hero, and not one of them noticed that Sam was paying no attention to their acclaim. He was looking to make sure the girls were on their way to the sea, wishing only that Ruby would be safe. Claire and Alex were already racing the wheelchair past the tennis courts where the weeds were as tall as trees, past the cabanas that hadn’t been used all summer long, past the snack bar where Sam would never work again. The owner of the beach club spied them, and he yelled for them to stay off the beach, but they went on anyway, past the bulldozers, until the sand was too deep to roll the wheelchair along. They had reached the seawall, made of cement and stones, which stood four feet tall.

“We have to carry her over.” Claire said.

By now, the mermaid was light as air, dusty and dry as the sand. The girls made a seat for her out of their crossed arms and Ruby held onto their shoulders. Together, they made their way over the cement wall, then jumped down into the water. It was high tide and the surf was rough, but it was the time when the mermaid had to go. They could hear the owner yelling at them, but his words were lost in the crashing noise at the shore.

“We’re going to have to bring her all the way in, past the breaking waves!” Alex declared.

Claire looked at her friend who had always been so afraid of water and felt immensely proud of her.

Together they carried Ruby. Her long hair blew out behind her and her skin gave off puffs of greyish dust, as if she were already turning to ash, right there in their arms.

“Hurry!” Alex shouted over the sound of the surf. “We’re losing her!”  
They went in past the whitecaps that shone like stars, past the water that was wilder than horses. Over the crashing they could hear the sound of the mermaid’s six sisters singing to her, urging her to quickly return to where she belonged.

Ruby seemed too weak to swim. At first, she was so limp she could not lift her head, but the farther into the water they brought her, the more she revived. Soon she splashed her tail, and before long she began to shimmer again, and when she laughed her watery laugh, they could tell it was time to let go. By then, the girls were up to their necks in the surf, doing their best to stay afloat in the rolling waves.

“We’ll never forget you!” The girls told her, and at the very same moment, they opened their arms. Before they could blink, she was gone, deep into the waves, to the very bottom of the sea where her sisters were waiting to rejoice and take her home and keep her safe all the rest of her days.

By the time the girls helped each other back to shore, their arms and legs were aching, but they didn’t want to let go of one another. They had both swallowed quarts of saltwater. They pulled strands of seaweed from their hair as they watched the sea, but all they could see were the waves. Ruby had disappeared without a trace. The girls might have felt as though they’d imagined her completely if they hadn’t found the two white shells Ruby had left for them on the seat of the wheelchair. They were beautiful shells, as white as the surf in the sea. When you held one up to your ear you could hear the sound of your best friend talking to you, even if she was a thousand miles away.

“What did I tell you girls!” The owner of the Beach Club shouted when Claire and Alex waved to Sam as he headed for the parking lot and roared off on his motorbike. “Stay off the beach!”

“We just wanted to say goodbye.” They told him, and then they hugged the startled owner and thanked him for the best summer of their lives.

That evening, while dusk was spreading across the sky, Alex’s grandparents loaded up their car. The moving men had taken most of their belongings, but Alex had set aside anything that was irreplaceable. These items would be taken along on the ride down to California, to ensure they wouldn’t get lost. There was the pearl necklace that had belonged to Alex’s mother, and the photograph albums, and one of the white shells left by Ruby. Claire’s mom had made up a picnic basket, with deviled eggs and chocolate cupcakes and a Thermos of pink lemonade, and she’d thrown in the necessities for anyone who leaves home: a compass, a map, and a photograph of the house that was left behind.

“It’s all right if you talk to the girl who moves in here.” Alex told Claire as her grandparents were buckling their seat belts and waving goodbye. “I’ve thought it over, and I really want you to.”

“I might say hello or something… Just to be polite.”

“Even if there isn’t a fire.” They both said at the very same time, the way they were still known to do.

Claire and Alex hugged each other right there on the lawn that Alex’s grandfather had cared for so meticulously. It was still the best lawn in the neighborhood, and Claire would be around to make certain the new people watered early in the morning, which was always best for any garden. Claire stood where she was and waved until Alex’s grandparents’ car disappeared. After that, she stood there a little while longer. It was still August, but it didn’t feel like summer anymore. All of a sudden the crickets’ call was faster, as if they knew that in only a week school would begin. It was obvious, even to the insects, that it would be quite some time before the weather turned hot again. That night, Claire’s mom fixed rainbow sundaes, which had always been Alex and Claire’s favorite treat: vanilla ice cream, strawberries, blueberries, hot fudge, and butterscotch... But Claire couldn’t eat. She went to the kitchen window even though it wasn’t possible to see anything next door; just an empty house, without any curtains, or any people, or anything at all. Claire got out her white seashell and she held it to her ear. The whooshing sound within was exactly like Alex’s voice, and Claire hoped that if she spoke into the shell Alex would hear her, no matter how far away she already was. ‘Safe trip,’ that’s what she called to her friend. ‘Here’s to the future...’ she said.

 

* * *

 

 

ON THE DAY THE BULLDOZERS knocked down the Beach Club, the weather changed at last. The sky was as grey as fish scales and the air was salty and wet. Claire and her mom stood in the parking lot to watch. Before long, the entranceway was crushed, the patio was leveled, and the fence around the pool was shoved aside. Hundreds of seagulls and terns circled in the sky. The pool had already been drained and, in no time, the bulldozers set to work breaking down the concrete. It was hard to tell which was noisier; the sound of the machines at work or the rumble of the wild surf? Claire had brought her camera along, and she’d planned to take a photograph to send to Alex so that she could see what had happened to the Beach Club, but it didn’t even seem like the same place anymore.

“I think it’s better if she just remembers it the way it was.” Claire told her mother.

True enough, some things were best kept as a memory, but some things changed for the better. Alex, for instance, had taken up swimming, which only made sense since she now lived right on the beach. As it turned out, she was good at it. She took to the water if not like a mermaid, then at least like a fish. Of course, if she hadn’t started swimming, she never would’ve ran into Sam- who was on his college team and often practiced in the blue bay that Alex could see from her window. The first time she spotted him, Alex thought Sam was a seal, that’s how far out in the water he was, but then he waved to her and swam over.

“I never thanked you and your friend for introducing me to Ruby.” Sam said.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” Alex said.

“But it did!” Sam was surprised. “She said she would find me and she did!”

When he swam back into the sea, Alex could see that he wasn’t really alone. There in the deepest blue water was a girl who was waiting for him, far beyond the breaking waves. For some time afterward, Alex brought her camera down to the beach, hoping for a photograph of Ruby to send to Claire. But after a while she put her camera away. Claire would be coming to visit next summer and that wasn’t so very far away. If they were lucky, if they watched carefully, they might still be able to spy Ruby. Far beyond the tide pools and the jellyfish, beyond starfish and snails… She is swimming there still.

 

Fin.

 

* * *

 

  
You never can tell what might happen in life. You just have to have the courage and faith in yourself to dive right in. That is something we all possess.

 

**Author's Note:**

> One last time: ALL CREDIT GOES TO ALICE HOFFMAN AND THE PEOPLE RIGHTLY CREDITED WITH THE ORIGINAL STORY/BOOK.


End file.
